State election officials were set to certify the stunning upset victory of Democrat Doug Jones in the US Senate race in Alabama on Thursday despite a last-minute legal challenge by defeated Republican candidate Roy Moore. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican, said he planned to ratify the results of the December 12 special election at 1:00 pm (1900 GMT).
"Will this affect anything?" Merrill said when asked on CNN about Moore's complaint of "systematic election fraud." "The short answer to that is no." Jones won 49.9 percent of the vote compared to Moore's 48.4 percent, a margin of nearly 21,000 votes out of 1.3 million cast in the southern US state, a Republican bastion.
A spokesman for Jones, the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Alabama in 25 years, also said he did not expect Moore's challenge to go anywhere. "This desperate attempt by Roy Moore to subvert the will of the people will not succeed," Sam Coleman told ABC News. "The election is over. It's time to move on."
The Alabama result dealt a stinging blow to President Donald Trump, who had thrown his support behind Moore, and narrowed his party's control of the US Senate to 51-49.
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